


Higanbana

by theoceanpath



Series: Constellations Dance on Your Skin [8]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - World War II, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2020-12-07 12:20:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20975804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoceanpath/pseuds/theoceanpath
Summary: 🥀





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "Monsters in the sky. That's what I remember. Those airplanes were monsters."
> 
> "And that boy?"
> 
> The soldier gestures to the Japanese youth hunched over at the edge of the bench with a malnourished frame and eyes that have seen too much for ten lifetimes. Pinched between his fingers is a struggling dragonfly's wings. Prometo hopes he won't crush it.
> 
> "Wouldn't hurt a fly," he answers through gritted teeth, smiling as the blade of the shuriken presses deeper into his skin.

It feels like a century since the appellation_ Señor de La Mancha _became synonymous with _refugee_. It was last year, the old man with missing front teeth claims. His measles-stricken daughter places her bet on five months ago.

They're his servants, by the way. At least they were, before the war started. Housekeepers are a fifty-carat diamond these days, and money is the biggest joke he has ever seen.

December 8 steals upon them like the start of the Apocalypse. There goes Pearl Harbor, there goes Clark Airbase. The sound of air raid alarms is all they hear everywhere, as wave upon wave of fighter planes lay waste to what was once the premiere colony of the Spanish Crown, _Las Islas Filipinas._

Prometo isn't even supposed to be here. He should be in Madrid celebrating the completion of his university degree, but the lure of a year-long vacation in his father's estate has drawn him back to the tropics— right at the heart of the Japanese invasion of the East Pacific.

He chokes on the fibers of his sweet potato.

War is war is war. War in Europe, war in Asia, war in America. Humankind has survived centuries of conflict, and this one should be no different.

He chokes again, this time on the tough, stringy weeds he plucked by the roadside. His teeth, his tongue, and his throat revolt against the sensation, but he holds his breath and swallows it down, praying his stomach won't throw a tantrum afterwards.

He reaches for his cup. Its handle is broken and the rim is chipped in two places, but at least it's too ugly to worry about robbers stealing it, and he's already sold the rest in exchange for food. He takes a sip. The bitter aftertaste remains.

And someone sticks a knife at his throat.


	2. Chapter 2

Prometo returns to the outskirts of the run-down _hacienda_ before nightfall. He has escaped unharmed and is now a master of a revolutionary art of self-defense— trading yam tubers for your life.

The mosquitoes flock to him like a lottery jackpot, but otherwise it's a blessed hour with no patrolling soldiers in sight and no workers tending to what remains of the sugarcane field. He has until sundown to do what great-grandsons of former governors do best: looting dead bodies.

There was gunfire this morning in this area, and the flies have come to feast on the evidence. By now his senses are too numb to revolt at the scene that awaits him. He finds a few corpses in that state between putrid and the first signs of decay. A good soak and the noonday sun will take most of the blood and stench off their clothes; the faces of the fallen are already nailing their portraits into his mind.

He starts tugging at a pair of trousers, searching for whatever valuables weren't already stripped off. No weapons, of course, and some thief already beat him to the shoes. He'll have to look elsewhere for a decent pair. He finds a silver crucifix in one pocket. A picture of a lady in another. She reminds him of the youngest daughter of the family strangled across the marketplace last week.

He rips off a string of dried garlic hanging around someone's neck and hurriedly conceals it as his ears pick up the unmistakable sound of incoming aircraft.

_Oh. No._

"Run for cover!" someone screams.

He dives into the nearest air raid shelter, praying shrapnel won't pierce through the banana trunks stacked on the ceiling, as his heartbeat soars with the symphony of thundering engines and bombs going off and the plink-plink-thud-thud-boom on the roof like a madman on a pianoforte. He thinks about his family back in Spain. He thinks about his cat.

The noise stops. Prometo is alive.

A full moon is watching when he emerges from the hideout. He clutches his bundle tight and runs, making a rough estimate of how many bodies he'll find on the way back to his house. He wonders if he still has a house.

To his surprise, there's barely any wreckage lying about. It seems the air raid was concentrated in the nearby town. He didn't expect them to spare this place.

What he also didn't expect was seeing a Japanese fighter plane in the middle of the field. He notices clumps of grass bending and the light of torches near the mountains and knows it's the resistance movement.

He has to flee now. The guerillas are advancing toward the plane, and if any guards are patrolling in the vicinity, he'll surely get caught in the crossfire. He's debating whether to return to the shelter instead of risking it out here in the open when he glimpses a flash of silver and firelight reflecting on a pair of pantherlike eyes.

He's Japanese.

Prometo drops his things and prepares to run for his life but the soldier lunges at him, slashing his arm with a knife. Prometo lands a punch on his jaw and he falls backwards.

The rebel forces are coming nearer. He just needs to hold him off a little longer. Maybe he can capture him. If this was the pilot of the plane, he might be carrying important documents that could be of use to the resistance. He kicks the man in the stomach.

His enemy scrambles backward and reaches for his knife. Prometo kicks it away from his grasp and pins him down. His opponent lashes out in his grip. Prometo squeezes his neck. He begins to cough and wheeze and it is then that Prometo gets a clear view of his face.

He's what— _sixteen?_ Seventeen? T_oo young to die._

It's a ridiculous sentiment for someone who has seen children less than ten years old falling prey by the dozen to either starvation or enemy bullets. This is the _enemy_. This is a _murderer_.

_This boy will kill you._

Death by suffocation it is. Sounds terrible. Sounds good. Let him have his revenge today and come tomorrow morning he can leave this world in peace, twenty-two years old, a warrior.

_But you were seventeen once, and you were too young to die._

The youth's struggles are getting weaker. His eyes are fierce, yet his fingers tremble against Prometo's arm. Whatever conscience he has left stirs to life, and he lets go of the boy's neck.

_Too weak to kill,_ his Russian teacher had called him. _Too weak to survive a war. Too weak to fight._

The boy scoots toward his knife again. He grips the handle with two hands, lifts his face to the moon, and plunges the blade into his—

"Wait!"

Prometo grabs the knife. Prometo stops the boy from killing himself.

_Okay, give me a rock. Give me a boulder and I will bash it on my head. I have lost my mind, I am saving the enemy, I am crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy…_

The boy's whimpers alert him to the situation at hand. The guerillas are closing in on them. They'll be here in a few minutes and the boy will have no chance to escape.

_What to do, what to do…_

Grabbing the boy's hand, he drags him toward one of the thicker clumps of stalks and throws the clothes around him. The boy seems to understand his intention, so he curls himself into a tight ball and lies very still.

_Please, please, please don't make a sound or we're both dead._

The rebels spot him, and he explains that he was looking for food and clothing when the raid started and hid in the field when he saw the plane, fearing what the Japanese guards would do if they found him wandering outside after sunset. They leave him alone afterward.

When not a single soldier remains, he uncovers the pile of clothes and helps the boy to his feet. He's panting hard and his face is frozen in shock.

_But those eyes…_

Those are a warrior's eyes.

He takes the knife. Better keep it than risk the boy hurting himself.

"Go. Try not to get yourself killed," he says, pushing him forward.

The boy nods as if he understands. He crouches low and vanishes into the sugarcane field— one thin, pale teenager at the mercy of the ruthless night.


	3. Chapter 3

To say that war turns your world upside-down is an understatement. The thrill of Prometo's life nowadays is diving out of sight before machine guns start to pulverize the area. If he had a gold coin for every fragment of ammunition lying on the ground, he'd have his own mansion by now.

_Rape, murder, murder. Slit throat, head wound, malaria._ Reeling off body counts like nursery rhymes.

"Count off. Kill every third."

Sometimes they don't even bother with numbers.

He supposes it's no worse than back in Europe. Hitler's gas chambers or Hirohito's bayonets?

His gaze sweeps across the bombed marketplace and the bystanders poking through the rubble. _This place was beautiful once,_ their stooped backs seem to say, and Prometo thinks of how the hills roll into themselves, how the lush rice paddies and fish ponds that were hallmarks of the countryside have disappeared and the once wealthy landowners can be found manually harvesting water spinach and digging up roots for supper.

You'd think he's addicted to this stuff, based on the ratio of stems and leaves he crams into his throat every single night. _Food of peasants_, they called it a year and a war ago, but it keeps them alive.

Someone taps on his elbow. It's a barefoot woman with holes in her clothes and dirt on her face that hasn't been washed in days. She begs him for food, but not in Spanish, not in English. Everyone speaks their native language out of fear of being accused of relaying information to the Resistance. He reaches instinctively into his pocket for something to help the poor lady, but all he finds is a bill with the number 1,000 written on top. What's the use of a Yen note you can't even read? He turns her away.

She holds open both palms to him. "My _unico hijo_," she implores, and the next word is "_gone_." _No_, he insists, and her eyes fill with crimson like the red and white flag standing proud above the desolation. Maybe he could color it yellow in a last act of defiance, a final ode to the burning sky and the acid rain that washes over them all.

* * *

He glimpses a familiar pair of almond eyes one afternoon while catching up on the latest talks of a _Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere._ He spits out his mouthful of bone-hard kernels, cursing the Japanese Imperial Diet and the absence of hot chocolate for _merienda_.

That boy always has the worst timing. Why show up exactly when the rebels start descending from the mountains to refill their supplies? And why is he never with the rest of the guards? Unless…

Could he be— a _spy_?

He needs to talk to that boy. But the local gossip mill is hard at work, and leaving right now would make him look suspicious. So he waits it out.

"Well, _compadres_? Let's place our bets. Will the general return this year or not?"

"Psshhh. Is our _president_ coming back? That, my friend, is the real question."

"I heard his health is failing. He probably won't last much longer."

"Doesn't America have the best doctors? He ought to live long enough to see the defeat of the Japanese."

"But when? Are the Allies really coming or not? And the USAFFE— are there any more left? Didn't they all march to their deaths?"

In the midst of all this, a crashing sound comes from the stack of supplies, and _guess who it is?_

Either this boy is a fool, or this boy is an absolute fool.

"Must have been a cat," Prometo says to the wary guerillas. "I'll take a look."

Well, it's _not_ a cat.

"I know it's you," he speaks to the sacks and cloth bundles, deliberately lowering his voice so the others won't hear. "You'll die if they catch you."

A head pops out, then a face, then arms with scabs on them. There's a string of fish in his hands and a small bag of rice.

_What, you mean the enemy is starving its own men too?_

"Here kitty kitty," he says aloud, followed by his best imitation of a meow. Once again, not the smartest idea, but what else can you do when a guy's life is on the line and men armed with half-meter-long knives are waiting for an explanation?

"They. Will. Kill. You." He hisses. There are at least twenty rebel soldiers here, and unless he puts a mask on, the boy's features are a dead giveaway. "Look, see that house over there? Go and hide." Prometo points to the hut with a bamboo fence that he claimed as home ever since the family villa was burned down and shoves the boy toward it.

He slinks away as Prometo rejoins the men, hoping nothing in his expression will alert them that something's amiss. The last thing he wants is to be suspected of conniving with the enemy.

Fate is grinning at him today it seems, for now there's a Japanese hiding in his house and five thirsty soldiers from the Resistance camped right in front of his door. Prometo steps inside to get water and lo and behold, there's the boy squeezed behind the water barrel in the corner. He's slim enough to fit in the cramped space, but can he breathe?

Well, that's not his problem. Prometo did what he could, and if they find the boy, he'll just have to feign shock at the sight of a Japanese spy in his own home. It might help to whip out a semester of theatre training with a few seconds of hysterical screaming thrown in for effect. Right.

What a fool he is. After all those fiends have done, a part of him still wants to spare this boy.

"Why help?" the boy whispers, as Prometo gets a scoop from the full barrel. His words bear a heavy accent— a distinctly _Japanese_ accent— the kind accompanied by knives and torture in Prometo's dreams.

He doesn't know why. This he knows: he wants to beat up this boy; he wants to… wants to slash his neck, wants to rip out those eyes. Those fierce, proud eyes.

"Why?" the boy repeats, growing insistent. "Two times. Why save?"

_Why?_ Because Prometo's stupid, that's why. Because he's a dreamer.

"I just want to see the end of this. I just want to wake up and never hear an airplane again. No more gunshots. No more bombs. I want to go home."

"Not want fight. Me too," the boy confesses. It's the plain and horrible truth, and hearing it from one of the enemy makes him sick in the gut.

"What's your name, kid?"

"Orijin."

Maybe it's a fake name, maybe it's a show of trust. He doesn't care anymore.

Someone knocks on the door. "Are you alright, compadre?"

He curses under his breath.

Orijin curses too. He seriously doubts _ku-so_ has anything to do with _el queso,_ but the space is cramped and they _really could die today_, so the next time Orijin mutters out loud, Prometo advises him to "say cheese!" The look of horror on Orijin's face is worth it. He probably thinks Prometo lost his mind, and he'd probably be right.

Eventually the men leave and it's just Prometo and the Japanese boy.

_Orijin_. His name is Orijin. That's all Prometo knows about him.

Their unspoken conversation fills the long hours until nightfall. Prometo points. Orijin shakes his head. Prometo points in the opposite direction. Orijin shakes his head again. And then it's a moonless night and Orijin is gone and Prometo is left to contemplate the termites taking refuge in the bamboo slats of his borrowed floor.

* * *

The latest attack on the weapons arsenal was a success, according to news from the only radio in the vicinity, so the Japanese are extra cautious these days. Prometo almost can't believe he gets to spend a few hours fake-partying with his neighbors.

"Let's end this all tonight! We'll throw a celebration for the ages! Roast pig for everyone! Bring out all the chickens in town! If we go down, we go down with our bellies singing happily ever after!" says the leader of the band in impeccable English.

They ring in the New Year with a feast of skewered field mice and grilled crickets.

"A toast to freedom! Long live the guerillas! Long live the brotherhood! Long live Rizal!" he whispers, swaying on his knees, and the air resounds with the exuberant applause of his stomach.

"Rizal died last century," someone points out. It's a pre-war college student. Of course it's a student. Only students ever care about these things.

"NO! He didn't die! He was killed! You—" he shakes his fist in Prometo's direction "—you Spanish monsters! You shot him in the back! You killed him! What did he do to you, huh? What did he ever do to you? Now he can't save us and it's your fault!" He hurls an empty flask of coconut vinegar at Prometo in revenge for a hero fifty years gone from this world. "The _Supremo_! He would have saved us! Shame on you Spaniards! Shame on Japan! Shame on—"

A tag team of skin and bones succeed in restraining him and clamping his mouth shut before his cries catch the attention of the guards on patrol.

"Down with Japan! Down with Japaaaaan!"

At least ten hands muffle his shrieks. "You fool!" one of them hisses, "If the soldiers hear us, it's the end!"

The men in uniform are drawing closer. Prometo can see the emblem of the blood sun, can hear the thumping of his heartbeat.

They take one look at Prometo and his companions and start laughing. Prometo glares bitterly at their retreating backs.

The man— _Enrique,_ the town butcher, he remembers now— is sobbing and coughing, pieces of broken soul leave his body with fits of tears. It takes all of Prometo's strength not to plug his fingers in his earlobes.

"We're all dying anyway. At least let me chose how I want to go."

Madmen, all of them. Drunk on war. It is not gold and it is not glory. It is none of those things. Every version of sky he knows has smoke and airplanes and houses razed to the ground. Every night he closes his eyes and sees jeeps and howitzers and signal flares lighting up the horizon like an exploding _piñata_. And all men are alike: the rich, the peasants, and the damned.

What would his grandfather say, if he were still alive?

_Open your eyes, Prometo. This is not a world for the weak._

Once upon a time, Prometo still knew how to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I do plan to finish this.


	4. Chapter 4

Come morning and Prometo's stomach is a woman scorned. The sight of double-edged knives is sobering for someone drunk on faces of the missing. He holds his breath as a band of cherry blossom emblems marches by, reeking of death.

Never in his life has he seen a flower so cruel.

_"_ _A bloodbath."_

_"_ _Don't know how I survived."_

_"_ _A dog saved us."_

The leader barks orders to his henchmen, and before he realizes what's going on, Prometo's arms are tied behind his back. Someone kicks at his legs, forcing him to knees. They make him crawl into line with the rest of the unfortunate bystanders. It's only then that he notices the wide hemp sacks being carried in. Four sacks. Four bodies. Four of the patrolmen were ambushed by the guerillas. They're going to murder civilians in exchange.

One of the soldiers starts walking in a line behind the captives, bayonet in hand. The woman in front of Prometo starts murmuring a prayer.

_Slash_. One down.

Everyone's praying now.

_Slash, slash._ Two. Three. One more. Prometo can feel the soldier's breath on his neck.

_Alright, this is it. Goodbye, Ma_.

_Slash._ The last person falls to the ground.

He releases his breath. The soldiers untie the rest of the men and order them to dig graves with their bare hands. Prometo scrapes his callouses on the rocks, cutting fresh red stripes on his fingers until his hands burn enough to match the heat blurring his eyes.

_Still alive, _he chants to himself as the scab on his wrist reopens. _Still alive._

Maybe that's the worst part.

* * *

It takes ages for him to return to his shack that afternoon. To his surprise, there's a lady waiting for him by the door.

"Marry me," asks the girl he's never met. Her eyes are cold.

His stomach growls in his stead. No food, no money, and now he's getting proposals for free. "How old are you, _hija_?" he asks the lass who is more lice and sunken eyes and scabbed elbows than anything else.

"Thirteen."

"No, marry me!" begs her friend. She's twelve, and the bamboo walls of her home bear scars from the threshing of bayonets last week.

A third one is pleading with a man old enough to be her grandfather. Better a sixty-year old than the Japanese. They take the girls to their garrisons and they are never seen again.

He turns them down. They cling and they whine, poor little limpets, and he shakes them off before they rip out his arms with their withered limbs. _Don't cry_, he scolds them. _Don't waste your tears._

Soon there won't be any more left.

(Salt is gold these days, and a few free drops are the next best flavoring around. It would be a shame to throw them away like this.)

"Please, Sir! I'll do anything!" the older one begs, and begs, and _begs_. Her friend's lips turn pale and bloody. She's counting, he realizes. How many days, how many times, how many will line up to rip them apart until the chapped skin torturing her face becomes her savior? They know what's coming, and they're terrified.

He knows what's coming. And he's tired. Being a foreigner means the target on his back is bigger. There is nothing he can do for these girls.

"I can't save you."

What has war turned him into? They're too young to die. He can't abandon them. He shouldn't. They're too young for this. Too young.

_No, not too young, _his memory scoffs at him. Certainly no younger than the child who stepped on a landmine. No younger than the students decapitated for conversing in English. No younger than the baby speared through in his mother's womb yesterday.

He leaves them weeping like the gentleman he is not, because once again, his pocket is empty save for a yen bill with markings he can't read and a face he only knows how to hate. It's worthless in the market and he'll have no regrets using it to wipe his ass during the next water shortage.

But will he even live until then?

It rips in half. The pieces fall upon the exhausted breeze, so utterly useless that the wind doesn't want them either, and a bubbling satisfaction twists through Prometo's chest.

* * *

"They're coming!"

_Not this again._ He gets up. He falls.

He doesn't want to run anymore. He can't run anymore. His legs are a landscape of bites and bruises and open sores. If he dies, he dies. He won't run anymore.

_Enough._

He closes his eyes.

_Breathe in. Breathe out. I'm going home now._

_Goodbye, Mama._

_It's turning dark..._

Something grips his shoulder. Someone's moving.

"RUN!"

An old man shakes him back to consciousness. It feels like the earth quaking… he's dizzy… he's exhausted… he's…

"Why?" he shouts back. "WHY?" He pushes the hand off his shoulder but the man is already sprinting away.

"Hurry!" is the final warning he gets as the man throws himself into the bulrushes by the swamp. _Like a pig_, Prometo mutters to himself, caught in a crisis between dignity and survival. But his instincts kick in with the shrieking hum of engines and propeller blades even as his mind reminds him that there is an end to everything. Bullets ricochet across the field, and Prometo submerges his face for camouflage, pressing his body against a hedge of boulders and covering his ears to drown out the shrieks of the fallen.

One down, two down. Dead, dead, dead.

"I have lived for a long time, and only one thing is endless," the elder tells him as they crawl out of the mud. "It never runs out, and you can never run away."

He hazards a guess. "War?"

"The ocean."

He wasn't expecting that. "The ocean? Why? We have ships. We have planes. We can go anywhere, and everywhere we find war."

"It seems that way when you are young. When you have lived enough summers and killed enough men you will see. Believe me, even fighting comes to an end, but the sea is forever."

The stranger mock-salutes him with a wrinkled smirk that seems out of place for a survivor of two wars. He must have fought the Americans back then. Perhaps he was there when the great general surrendered.

Maybe he hated the Spanish too.

"Nonsense," declares Prometo. "It's not the ocean. It's not."

His companion stoops to uproot a clump of water spinach, unmindful of the spray of mud that goes flying to his chest. He offers a few stalks to Prometo as a goodwill offering.

Prometo declines. There are some edible weeds near his hut and the old man looks as though he hasn't had a real dinner in weeks. Prometo helps him start a fire and pluck moringa leaves to make soup.

Now if only they had rice. There's lots of bamboo here for cooking, but no rice.

"You're a Spaniard, aren't you? I killed dozens of your countrymen back in my day."

"Why did you save me?"

"I didn't. You saved yourself."

Prometo can only scowl at that. "I ran. Like a bloody _coward."_

The aging soldier looks at him sympathetically, then lifts his gaze to the darkening sky and whistles a love song.

* * *

They force him to work in the field. The Japanese are building an airstrip in the piece of land that used to be his father's plantation. And he, the former master, is now tilling the ground in the afternoon heat, cursing the weeds for never backing off no matter how hard he fights to wrestle them away.

His skin is growing tanner. He looks nothing like the rich young heir who first came to these isles two years ago. He hears gunshots and crouches down and people fall and the ground blooms and he carries on. Why they haven't singled him out, he doesn't know. Roll the dice; it's a game. Roll the dice and shoot.

Then they run out of bullets.

He wakes up at first light to hear screaming. Villagers herded into a circle, soldiers knifing them through. Captives dragged away, skin unzipping in red blotches as they go. The young women cry. The old ones bow their heads in silent grief.

_They're stupid,_ he thinks. _Don't scream. Don't cry. Conserve your strength. Maybe we can live to see the end of this._

And then the wailing stops. Now there is no sobbing to drown out the deafness of everything else.

Nights like this are endless. Someone unearths a jar of coins and cigarette wrapper hidden under a rock. "Someday this will be useful," the man says, clutching his hoard of pesos and dollars to his chest like a lovestruck fool.

Prometo closes his eyes.

The next day the man is stabbed to death.

_Stupid,_ he thinks. _Why didn't you scream? At least for five seconds, you could have done something with your life._

Then someone shrieks, and he wants to kiss her feet in gratitude.

There is death here, everywhere; it sinks its fangs into the soul and peeks out of dull eyes and feet that walk aimlessly. There is fear. The young men leave the city to fight in the jungles. The women disappear and show up in the camps. The elderly are left to starve. Women in hiding, men turned to scavengers.

His world is a pig pen. His mouth is sealed shut by rumors of the secret police. Spies abound, and traitors, pointing out names left and right in a desperate bid to save their own. Your friend is your enemy and there is no faith anywhere.

Someone finds a can of corned beef in the garbage and grins like he won the lottery. He runs into the secrecy of the trees, but to his dismay, his fellow beggars spot him and signal for a free-for-all. A soldier glares at them; they scurry away like roaches, fear rattling their paper-thin frames.

The cycle continues. Interrogation. Beatings. Water torture. The hose stuck in their mouths at full blast until their bellies bloat. Prometo befriends a girl; she smiles but once, and days later, horror has clawed lines into her face so deep he can hardly recognize her. A man claps loudly as another house burns to the ground. He had eight children, Prometo learns. He lost all of them.

He fights the urge to gag. Food is scarce, he cannot waste what little is in his belly. Having just barely avoided a fistfight for a handful of rice and bits of stale fish, he swats away flies and wonders if maggots could be delicious too.

"Back to work!"

The commanders take turns beating them up. He grits his teeth and curses Mussolini, curses every Japanese soldier who ever existed.

Except _that boy._

Who hasn't showed up in _months_. Maybe he's dead too.

What a shame.

His mind drifts to his grandfather, the last bastion of the galleon trade, a brilliant man with a fondness for coffee matched only by his bottomless store of tales of Mexico and the Mediterranean and pirates overwhelming the merchant ships. He remembers Madrid in all its glory, and all the carefree days of his youth when the boom of canons was a novelty rather than a parody of lullabies every night.

He prays for his sister back in Spain. And his parents— are they safe? Where are the Allies? Will the war never end? The casualties pile up and he ceases to notice anymore. Grenades are flying, ash is falling, and the winged monsters come in droves, mining stars until the last light disappears from the sky.

* * *

The Japanese boy, he finds out, is still alive.

Thinner, yes, longer hair and darker skin, but alive.

Well. Prometo probably should be relieved. If he didn't have a fever right now.

Orijin pops up out of the blue one day holding a coconut shell with fresh juice inside.

Prometo stares at it.

"For sick," Orijin explains with the little English he managed to pick up. He brings more food and a tattered mess of rags that was probably once a blanket.

Prometo accepts the help with a muttering of thanks, and _muchas gracias_. He wonders if he should bow. He decides against it.

"Dou itashimashite."

"Huh?"

"Dou i-ta-shi-ma-shi-te," Orijin repeats. "After give help."

"Dou itashimashite," he pronounces carefully. "Oh, and _arigatou_." It's not the first Japanese word he learned, but one he never imagined himself saying. Ever.

The boy curls up in a bed of grass and falls asleep. Prometo watches him until his own eyelids droop, imagining a happier world where red only meant sunsets and tulip fields, and children's laughter would be heard near the rice paddies, and cherry blossoms could be kind.

He hopes for a glimpse of that world someday.

_Dear Mama, _is his last coherent thought before drifting off,_ I should be dead. But I met this Japanese boy, and we almost killed each other, and we're probably friends._

Friends. With a Japanese.

The world is surely coming to an end.


	5. Chapter 5

Prometo tosses the covers around helplessly, nine lifetimes deep in the throes of despair because some stupid puny worthless evil pest just had to fall in love with him.

They call it the malady of the mosquito's kiss. Meaning the insect, not the fighter plane. He'd be laughing at the irony of it if his chest didn't hurt with every breath.

Dengue fever is hell. Someone must have inserted Mt. Vesuvius into his head when he was asleep. And a couple hundred earthquakes too. He can't eat. He wants to eat. He can't eat. He is hot. He is cold. There is no one here. He pulls his blanket over his head and tries to rest.

He can't. He wakes up over and over and over again right before his dreams begin to swallow him up.

Morning comes. Morning goes. The day eats itself. Life wriggles by in a nod to simpler years when he could recall the same story ten or twenty times because he hadn't much else to tell. Now the weeks blur; one death is two hundred more, it's the same thing every, every, every time.

_Tell me something different. Tell me of someone who lived. Tell me how much food he got to eat. Tell me how many friends celebrated with him._

_Tell me someone took all the guns and buried them under the ocean forever. Tell me of bluebells and blue skies… and fat cats… and sheep._

Delirium finds himself absently poking at the ants crawling on the mattress. It's the best entertainment you can get when your stuffed rag pillow is your closest companion and the only other human being around looks like he's having a philosophical discussion with the knife he keeps strapped to his leg.

Orijin is in the three-foot space they call a kitchen, contemplating the proportions of a fresh bundle of herbs. He boils a pot of a certain pinnate weed with button shaped flower clusters and lanky, earthy green stems that ooze milk-white sap when bruised.

Prometo leans closer.

He's humming. Orijin is humming.

He sounds like a bird in the wrong person's kitchen. It's strange but not unpleasant. It's… it's like a tiny sliver of home pasted in this warzone.

Orijin pauses to glance in his direction. Their eyes meet, briefly, until the water boils and Orijin turns away.

Prometo watches him until his eyelids give up.

* * *

There's a rough hand on his forehead when he wakes up in the dead of the night.

It's dark, it's painful, his limbs feel like hollow sticks attached by strings and old glue. It hurts to lie down. It hurts to move.

Heat surrounds him, engulfs him, devours him, and some part of him doesn't want to open his eyes because maybe it's some kind of ploy by the Japanese spies to drag him to his death.

The fever goes down by several degrees, then red erupts all over his body, red as blood, red as the flag. Red paint all over. Even now the Japanese win.

"You be okay," Orijin whispers, voice hoarse and distant. "Someday." It sounds crazy enough to believe.

"Are you leaving now?"

Orijin shakes his head. "I sleep too."

"Okay."

_Okay_, because just like this they're still hanging on. He feels sorry for Orijin who's probably risking his life to bring him food, and medicine, and news, and some sort of silent companionship as he marathons around his bed, useless. Why the boy insists on taking care of him, he doesn't know. Maybe he misses people too.

Orijin gives him a cup of bitter liquid. He sips it little by little, little by little, and by the time he's done the boy's shoulders have begun to droop against the wall.

"Arigatou," he tells Orijin the dozenth time. The boy sighs.

Sleep is beautiful this time around.

* * *

The next morning Prometo finds a wrinkled brown paper bag beside his cup. Inside is a drawing of a bear shaded red and yellow, the colors of Prometo's flag. It's the cutest predator he's ever seen, and from a distance it even looks like it's smiling.

There are six words in the lower right corner: _Him my friend. Your friend too. _Somehow Orijin got hold of watercolors and sketched this for him while he slept.

Prometo wipes at his eyes. This thing, this is precious.

He crawls toward the light. The sky is blank save for a big hole in the center right where the luminance of another world accidentally leaks out, dripping fools gold on the ground through rips in the drapes.

Outside a passing Japanese regiment scares away a flock of pigeons. Away they fly, up, up, towards the solemn field of gray, no crimson stains in the unconquered horizon, across where a blinding lemon white circle peeks from the silver lumps that hearken to Barcelona's sheep. And maybe the fight is not over yet.

Unlike theirs, his sun is golden.


	6. Chapter 6

Christmas of 1943 is solemn and listless. Cats prowl the night like kings and magi, filling the air with their shrieking carols. Presents from the garbage hang from their teeth— canned leftovers and fishbones and rodent corpses that Effie, his favorite, sometimes leaves at his feet. He tosses her half a chicken leg. She thanks him for their secret exchange gift ceremony and goes to play holiday games with her friends. He doesn't have candy or a single pair of stockings that isn't bursting with holes, but there's a citrus bush that he pruned into a triangular shape yesterday, and with the addition of shredded cigarette wrappers and paper bag strips, he can actually imagine the golden star on top.

_Feliz Navidad_ sounds like a strange thing to say at a time like this, yet he hums a couple of songs and greets Orijin with the merriest grin he can manage without splitting his parched lips.

Tonight has to be special, Prometo insists. They share dinner by the light of kerosene lamps under Sagittarius' twinkling arrows and tell stories and make believe the world is whole again. Lying flat on their backs, they paint a mosaic out of the four-pointed pinheads making faces at them tonight.

Prometo points to one of the star clusters. "Hey, over there! What do you see?"

Orijin tears his gaze from another string of glowing lights they dubbed a fisherman's net and looks where Prometo's fingers are aimed at. It takes him awhile to find it. Tucked in its own corner, small and quiet, a group of twinkling dots form a row of triangles of roughly the same height.

"Mountains?" Orijin suggests. "Like… like Sendai."

Sendai is his hometown, Prometo finds out. It is full of trees and mountains and puddles left after the rain.

"That one could pass for a soccer ball. And that's my parents' cat," the pure-blood Madrileño volunteers, tracing imaginary ears and a tail. He spots a few somewhat parallel lines that remind him of his old school.

"How 'bout those?" he asks next. It's Orijin's turn to guess this time. The formation has a neck and two legs— at least, that's how it looks like in Prometo's head. Orijin is far more creative than he is when it comes to dreaming up fancy stuff like this.

"My sister."

Orijin glances straight ahead. He's facing the east, of course, towards that place where the great orb rises over shingled pagodas, and castles come in every shape Prometo has never seen in the western world.

He studies Orijin's face in the absence of sunlight. The boy has never talked about his family before. _An eye for an eye, a truth for a truth_. One secret for another— this is the art of war at its finest, and perhaps the code of friendships too.

"I also have a sister," says Prometo, setting aside his galaxies for a better view of the flickerings of Orijin's eyes.

"Older or younger?"

"Older. Yours too?"

"Mmm."

She must have cried when he left. Prometo thinks of the girl, a nameless face, a faceless name; the tears that trickle down on starry nights just like this, wishing and wishing things that will never come true.

"Saya," comes a whisper so low Prometo almost misses it.

"What?"

"Her name Saya."

"Saya. It sounds very beautiful." _It sounds like someone who shouldn't have to witness a war. "_My sister's name is Laura, by the way."

"Laura," Orijin repeats, mispronouncing the first consonant so terribly that Prometo has to rake his nails down his forearm to keep from laughing. "Sound beautiful too."

"Yeah. It does." Prometo pinches the bridge of his nose as a wave of nostalgia hits him. His misses Spain. He misses the stray cats in the neighborhood. He misses the food.

Here lie two misfits in a foreign land, trapped in a war they cannot escape, who may never see their family again. It's serendipitous and tragic, and he finds the courage to ask something that's been plaguing him for weeks.

"Why'd you join the army?"

Orijin looks away. The minutes pass, raw and awkward and marked by his slightly wheezing breaths. His asthma seems to be bothering him again, and Prometo is just about to suggest that they head back indoors when he finally answers.

"Family."

It's a weak and broken sound.

"If I die government pay them. Father is poor and need money. No food."

Orijin sits up and tugs at the hem of his shirt, feeling the thinness of the worn out cotton fabric. "Winter coming," he hisses. "It cold there. But here not cold. I miss snow and make snowman with family. Before war I want someday try skate ice. I want see penguin. I want bee farm and sell honey. I want… s-see Mo-ther again."

Prometo lets him weep in tearless silence. Neither of them knows how to cry properly anymore. He takes a deep inhale and keeps himself from screaming and that is the best comfort he can give now.

"When this is over, if we make it through, let's try that skating thing, alright?"

Orijin nods. Prometo rests a hand on the boy's weary shoulder.

They're interrupted when a signal flare across the hills bursts into bloom. Orijin thinks it looks like a spider lily.

_"Higanbana._ Red flowers mean person you love is dead and you feel sad because separated forever."

"Perhaps. But for us Spanish, red flowers are always carnations. For us, red carnations mean you love someone so much that you don't give up."

Orijin's eyes are on the stars again. The gas lamp flickers, redesigning shadows. The crickets drown out everything else.

The boy's gaze leaves the horizon but the starlight remains on him. "I think," he says, "I maybe like carnation better."

According to the rumors, nobody dies that night.

* * *

The next week Prometo's house is gone. The village has vanished into thin air, all its memories condensed into black scars lounging on the earth like exhausted volcanoes.

He can't believe it. His house got turned into roasted lechón overnight and he wasn't able to save a piece.

(It's not even his own house. They claimed that one for themselves a long time ago.)

Prometo shakes his head. And screams.

His eyes aren't wet enough for anything else.

"I'm joining the resistance," he announces calmly, more to himself than to the Japanese teenager beside him.

"You fight? But you not soldier!" Orijin protests. His eyes are wide open like the first time they ran into each other in the sugarcane field.

"I can't just wait here and die! Either the guns kill me, or hunger does. I'm going to the jungle. When I find the guerillas, I'll join them."

Orijin's expression is bordering on desperate. "You can—"

"I can't go with you," Prometo finishes for him, with a coldness that surprises even himself.

"But—"

"They'll work me to death. Or beat me up till all my ribs crack and I can't breathe anymore. Or just kill me. You know that."

"But maybe I can— save— I can save—"

"You can't," he sighs at last as Orijin hangs his head in defeat. Prometo lays a comforting hand on his cheek. The boy trembles.

"I don't know what's going to kill me. I don't know if I'll survive. But I'm going to try."

"You not die. _Nooo die,"_ Orijin whines. It's almost heartbreaking to hear. It sounds like _please._ It sounds like_ I can't do it without you_.

"Hey, we promised, remember? We'll buy two pairs of blades and go skating when the fighting's over. I'll do my best to keep that promise. You too, okay?"

Orijin nods fiercely, with the determination of one preparing for battle, and Prometo thinks he finally understands how the Japanese won. "You live," he says, as if his words could dictate a war. "I live too. Then we meet."

"Yeah. That's the plan."

"I find you."

"I know you will."

Goodbye is a painful high-five they perfected on the days Prometo was stuck in bed. He puts the Pooh drawing in his knapsack next to a set of clothes and his mother's ring, the only things he has left in this world.

"Take care," are his parting words as he hugs Orijin with all his might, tears and all, wishing he could pull the stars down and draw a map of shimmering lights to lead their paths together someday.

Or maybe, he realizes, as he marches toward the hills, he won't need them after all. He follows the trails forged by wildflowers.

None of them bleed scarlet.

_Yet._


	7. Chapter 7

**[Interlude]**

**Orijin**

You are in the forest again. Everywhere is green— gold green, brown green, black green. Moving splashes of color in the form of beetles scurrying on leaf litter. Rocks suffocated with moss where pinhead violets leave their fingerprints in petals so tiny one could only wonder why they exist. Palm fronds curve like swan necks; banana leaves have split into centipedes. In the sky are white smoke-breathing dragons guarding their nests. You touch your fingertips to the tree of many heads, many necks, and many feet.

The forest, the clouds, the flags— shivering is their secret alphabet. Maybe the strongest words are the ones spelled out by the swaying branches. The flowers boast of things they know and condemn us to their silence. Or maybe they speak but we don’t listen, and we don’t know how.

You miss Japan. You miss Sendai. You miss home, you miss home, you miss home.

Your mind is rooms full of cities. People take their shapes and their colors when they leave, and everything defiled by their touch crumbles like acid. And you never know to what extent they squeezed themselves into your world until you see all the tar stained marks and holes in your memory. You learn how to walk down the streets with those gaps. You reach for blank spaces and stop yourself from bumping into things that don’t exist.

You stop yourself from calling your mother, your father, your sister, your dead friends and their dead houses. You punish your tongue for refusing to forget. _Prometo, prometo, you promise cruel, impossible things._

These are not your stars. You do not stick them together in whatever way you wish. You do not draw your own course across the galaxy.

You want to run away but you cannot. The world is too big for you. It is too tiny to escape.

_Where is he_, you wonder. _Prometo, prometo, we will live to see the end of this._ The world is jagged broken and crushed broken and cracked broken and splintered broken and flaked broken and powdered broken, but _you will live to see the end of this._

The moon bows, the stars fade, your consciousness travels backwards. You are in Sendai again. You are going to school. The earth does not quiver under the weight of the tanks.

Birds are singing.

The cherry blossom greets you as you fall asleep at last.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, soundtrack to this is Battlefield by Svircina.

_"I won't die,"_ he swears to Orijin, and he stamps the boy's sobs over his heart.

A three day's hike into the deep mountains takes Prometo to the guerilla's camp, and now he's on his knees before one of the subcommanders of the Southeastern faction of the Resistance.

"Your name?" asks a man with tribal arrowheads running the length of his arm, a torn pillowcase for a coat and wrinkled hollows sinking into his neck and cheeks.

"Javi— Javier," he sputters, blurting out the first thing that comes to mind. It's a common name, there are many Javiers here and fewer chances of him being singled out if ever someone were to report him to the Japanese secret police.

"Javier. Welcome to the brethren," their leader says in a voice made gruff by the terrors of smoke and sleepless nights. One of them entrusts him with a long jungle _bolo_ knife, choosing to ignore his Spanish features for the sake of their common foe.

They introduce him to more members seated around a fire pit. Of the group, only a few are soldiers, a handful are American, some are mestizos, most are peasant farmers left with no choice but to fight. In their midst is a student of the colleges of the arts channeling his oratory prowess outside the classroom.

"The sun rises 365 days a year! As long as we live to see a sunrise, we shall continue this war!" he declares, ending his speech with a shake of his fist and enough conviction to send all of his audience clapping and cheering.

All except one.

_"Pffft…_ The sun doesn't even move. It's the earth that does all the work," someone in the back mumbles.

Prometo shoots him a surprised glance. He's not a local, not American either. He looks partly of Asian descent— Chinese, perhaps?

"The name's Chan. Canadian," is his brief self-introduction.

_"Canadian?"_

"Surprised? Well, you're Spanish, aren't you?"

"My grandfather was town mayor," Prometo replies, ignoring the _you shouldn't be here either_ that goes unsaid. Forty years ago, he would have been the enemy. An almost half decade of American rule has not erased the sins of his own country in the eyes of these men.

"Mine was a soldier," Chan says. "He was a good soldier."

More members flock in when the sun departs from its watchpost. They next hours are marked by insect assailants and radio static and hushed voices tuning in on the latest news.

"I can't believe it! It's ten civilians now for every Japanese killed!"

"And the students are forced to learn Nihonggo?"

"Those men are soulless!"

"Greater East Asia Prosperity in your dreams!"

Rumors of germ warfare are the worst. There are reports of human experiments by a secret unit that cuts open live prisoners in the name of science. Some president gives a speech. More bombings, little success, and lots of speculation as to when MacArthur is coming back.

"He hopes to return before the season ends," says the broadcaster, and Prometo has to intervene before a certain hotheaded Chinese-Canadian turns the radio into a pile of junk.

"What seasons? There is no spring in this godforsaken country!" Chan snaps. "We'll all burn in the heat before that happens!"

"Hey, calm down. Someone might hear us," Caluza, one of the soldiers in the group, warns him.

Chan glares, but his eyes can't seem to focus as the shadows split into pairs and dance around the fire. "You always say that," he grumbles. "They'll hear us, they'll see us, they'll freaking _smell_ us. Well, look what happened last time."

He takes a deep breath and marches to the supplies tent, fishes out a bundle of rags, unrolls it on the damp grass, and pretends to sleep.

* * *

A raindrop is a gift from heaven, a secret bubble that explodes when it falls and you never realize what you got. Prometo hasn't seen a single one in two weeks, and it isn't even summer yet.

He shifts on his toes, instantly feeling a hundred ant pricks racing up his leg. The soles of his sandals are worn and cracked and barely attached to thin leather straps unsuited for this terrain. He massages his blistered feet, crouches down and waits for the sweat to drip down his neck.

The shrill _weeep weeep_ of needle tongues whirlwinds through the canopy. They come like pint-sized paratroopers, alighting on the scalloped flames in the bushes and dragon-spined bark fingers on the tree with reindeer antlers. He reaches above and plucks a few berries tucked in the paw shaped foliage, aims at the storm of feathers prancing on the ground, and lets missiles fly. The birds leave eventually.

It's back to boredom again. He lets his fingers skim the soil, feeling the rapier-toothed leaf blades rising from the earth, testing their strength against his calloused fingers.

Grass is a stubborn plant. It knows how to hide and how to shed its colors. Bullets come; grenades come, and it outwits them all.

They will live and he will too.

He just has to survive this.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

Prometo twists his head and immediately regrets it. His neck is sore from staring at bugs crawling all morning.

"You know, overthinking is what gets you killed. Just aim and shoot. That's the only way," the U.S. marine on the other end of the log advises him. His brown hair is quite long for someone in the army; he must have been here since the time of the Death March.

"J.B., it's been _hours._ Is this really what guerillas do all day?"

"We're being patient. Patience and strategy always pay off in the end."

"Meaning we just sit and wait and hope no one attacks?"

"We have the advantage here. They don't know these mountains."

Prometo doesn't know them either. He challenges J.B. to a game of jackstones and loses.

Another millennium passes. He spends it counting the holes in his shirt and pants. None of them have had breakfast or lunch, but the Japanese patrol is passing near the camp. Fear of being spotted keeps their fires unlit.

Prometo takes a bite of uncooked rice. It tastes as appetizing as raw grass seeds, no more palatable than grinding pebbles between his teeth, but he's so hungry, he's so hungry— he'll do anything—

"Ma, I want chicken."

The child's mother quickly hushes him, promising roasted pig and stew and all kinds of stuff Prometo hasn't tasted since a lifetime ago. The boy plops down and chews on the hem of his shirt. Not too far away, a baby cries.

The children are starving too.

"Make it stop!" one of them hisses. _Martinez._ "Or we're all headed for the concentration camp!"

Prometo finds a young girl trying in vain to hush the babe's whines, turning shades paler as the screaming grows even louder.

He touches the baby's forehead. "She has a fever." There's an unhealthy flush to its skin and her eyes are not as clear as they ought to be. "The mother?"

The girl shakes her head.

_Missing. Captured. Dead._ The quivering of her eyelids could mean any of those things.

"What's the baby's name?"

She shakes her head again. "I don't know. Mama never said." The movement only serves to highlight her malnourished features.

"Esperanza. I'm calling her Esperanza."

_Hope._ The last thing to go. The last thing to die.

Maybe she'll survive them all.

* * *

Someone is singing tonight. The rebels are camped around the fire pit and chattering among themselves, reciting the grievances of their war-ravaged land. It brings to mind the beats of flamenco with guitar and ukulele around a bonfire, except this time the flames are barely more than embers, no one cares to dance, and not a single laugh can be heard in this circle of grim faces.

And yet, stars be their witness, they will sing their destinies to submission. It starts with a whistle, picked up by another, low strains joined by voices steadily increasing in volume. Louder than the crickets, louder than the crackling of their torches, withered hands pressed against their still-beating hearts in the pallid moonlight.

_Tierra adorada, hija del sol de Oriente,_

** _Land dearly beloved, child of the Orient sun_ **

It's a marching song too, like the refrain of _Himno de Riego_ of his own carnation-striped flag. Felipinas isn't even his fatherland. But it's a reason to fight, a reason to live, and he understands that. He sits with them and hums along, earning a few raised eyebrows from his comrades.

_Es una gloria para tus hijos_

_Cuando te ofenden, por ti morir._

** _Whenever you are oppressed,_ **

** _It is an honor for us, your children_ **

** _To lay down our lives for you._ **

Someday he'll beat down those Japanese and make them pay for everything they've taken from him. _Someday,_ he vows to himself and to this tricolor flag with a sun and three stars. For now he'll do his best to stay hidden and hope he'll never have to hear _Kimi Ga Yo_ ever again.

"We're going down in history as the bravest fools who ever lived," Martinez remarks.

Prometo shakes his head. "I don't care about history."

"I hope you at least care about the secret raid tomorrow night," a third voice cuts in.

It's Gabby, a member of the unit that crossed paths with their group this morning, the only other Canadian in camp, and the only one with proper medical knowledge among them. She's assigned to the children, and it is with great care that Prometo asks her to look after Esperanza and her sister, who have both fallen ill. Gabby tries her best, but the baby's fate is not in their hands anymore now.

"The raid will be alright," Prometo assures her. "If all goes according to plan, the Japanese won't suspect a thing."

"I hope so," she sighs. "Esperanza will miss you if you don't come back."

* * *

Unfortunately for them, things do _not_ go according to plan. Ten minutes into the raid, Chan trips over a stake and stumbles into a tent and Orijin finds him. Prometo suppresses a groan, pushes Chan back towards the woods, and faces Orijin, arms up as a sign of peace.

To say Orijin is shocked would be an understatement.

Prometo is no less surprised. He should have known the boy would be here. He just never expected they would meet on this night of all nights.

"Ori—"

He doesn't get to finish because another Japanese suddenly appears from the shadows.

"Yameru!"

That voice. He missed that voice.

Now there's a bayonet pointed at Prometo's neck.

"Kei, _onegai,"_ beseeches Orijin while pushing his comrade's gun away. The man sneers in disapproval and threatens Prometo one final time. But he leaves them alone.

"Go hide in trees. Wait for me."

He returns to the garrison, leaving Prometo to the mercy of his exploding heartbeats. Will the soldiers find him? Will Orijin betray him? No, he won't. He can't. But will his companion keep his mouth shut?

Consequences are unavoidable. This can't possibly end well.

There's the sound of footsteps in the grass everywhere. The resistance fighters must be heading back now. Maybe the Japanese have spotted them. Maybe some off them are dead. Prometo crouches down and curls into himself, praying.

A shout rings into the air. They've been discovered. _Oh no._ He has to go. Bullets fly, screams and shadows fill the night.

"Wait!" someone hisses. Sure enough, it's Orijin dragging a bundle with him through the thicket as silently as he can. Before Prometo can ask what's happening, a half-full sack plops on the ground.

"Here…food…you need…right?" he pants, clutching his knees as he tries to catch his breath.

It's rice. Half a sack of rice. Orijin risked his life for this. All the hours of waiting and praying and now there is food in his hands.

_Arigatou,_ Prometo murmurs over and over, reeling tears in. _Gracias. Muchas gracias._ _Thank you so, so much._

He pulls Orijin into a rushed hug, squeezing every bone in his body, then dashes to the hills as fast as his legs take him, holding on to the sack for dear life. There are geysers shooting in his chest and a giant crescent moon on his face. At least for a few days more, they will not starve.

"Javier!"

"I got food!" he gasps, barely able to contain his excitement. He's alive, Orijin's alive, they'll have dinner tonight— the rush of adrenaline gushing through his chest feels like drowning.

"No bullets?"

"No— what?" His breath comes to a stop. "What?"

"What is food with no ammunition?" his fellow rebel mocks him.

"Stop it. Be thankful we got something." Caluza reprimands. He turns to Prometo and claps his shoulder. "Well done, Javier."

Not for the first time, he feels useless.

* * *

Torchlight brings more news to the distraught Spaniard.

"Esperanza?" he calls and he calls and he calls. The only answer is a bundle of soiled cloth. No whines, no cries.

_No._

"She passed away soon after you left," Gabby tells him.

Returned to the earth. Like grass.

He clenches his fist.

_I couldn't save you either._

He helps dig her grave at dawn's first light, watching in disbelief as the cloth-wrapped corpse is slowly laid in the ground. He lays white flowers on top, little white jasmines full with the fragrance of an unlived life.

_Beautiful. Precious. Treasured._

_And dead._

A low wail erupts in his throat. Everything just _breaks_ inside, and every tear he thought he'd wrung dry, every ounce of utter _helplessness_ rushes out, and he falls and falls and falls. The babies are dead. The elderly are dead. The men his age are dying. Everyone is dead.

Someone grabs him by the arm. It's Chan. Who is still alive, for some reason. Of all the crushing problems about to break his mind apart, dealing with this pessimist is the last thing he wants to do.

"Who was that? He's the one who led you to the rice, wasn't he? Are you a—"

_Sympathizer. Traitor. Spy._

"I'm not conniving with the enemy. But that boy saved my life before."

"He's _Japanese._ It must be a trap; he's using you—"

"He gave us food, Chan."

"Which could be _poisoned."_

"It's not."

"Did you hit your head somewhere? They're the reason the girl is dead!"

"He didn't want this."

"Which of us did? Tell me, did any of us want this? If those devilspawn didn't go and start a war…"

Prometo covers his ears, mouth open in a silent, furious scream. Desperate people do desperate things. He wants a fight. He needs a fight. He wants to punch—

"Chan. Javier. Whatever you're mad at each other about, go take it out on a tree instead. This is a funeral," Caluza intervenes before their argument escalates into a shouting match.

"I want to _kill_ someone," Prometo growls. He finds a tree and does not punch it. He shouts his rage to the whole wide universe, making no sound.

* * *

The sun drops. Children kick around a rubber ball when he gets back to camp. He finds Chan on his knees in supplication.

_In this war, we are all beggars._

_But even beggars can put up a fight._

"What happens when Hope is dead?" he asks Chan.

"My father said," Chan replies, staring into his silver necklace for answers, "when all hope is gone, there's only one thing left."

"What's that?"

"I don't know. They killed him before I even cared to ask."

He looks at the grass. _Still alive._ It's not the end yet.


End file.
